This blog kicks off a series on the joint portfolio design process by UNDP Uzbekistan, facilitated by the Accelerator Lab Uzbekistan and led by the UNDP RBEC Innovation Team. The process includes several steps. In the first blog, we cover the initial stage – the Problem phase. Thank you to Elina Jarvela, Yaera Chung, and Lejla Sadiku from UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub’s Innovation Team for their continued support and guidance.
We are currently observing the start of a shift across UNDP towards the experimentation with and adoption of systems thinking as an approach across diverse geographical and thematic domains. Systems thinking stems from an attempt to understand and solve scientific problems, which require looking at separate elements as interrelated parts of an eco(system). Now, it is also proving to be an apt tool to rethink development in the face of increasing complexity and uncertainty of the problems and their context.
Currently, in international development, projects are mainly a standalone undertaking, despite being formally nested under an overarching programme. But decades of project implementation have shown us the writing on the wall: “Projects don’t change systems”. Many of the challenges faced by development organizations now require transforming the systems within which they operate and which they hope to impact. In this context, business as usual doesn’t work anymore. Hence UNDP Uzbekistan joined other pioneers in portfolio practice – from Burundi to Serbia – in exploring and adopting portfolio design within the organization.
Our choice of designing a forward-looking, employment-centered Future of Work portfolio for UNDP Uzbekistan was determined by the increasing importance of employment issues in the country, the potential development opportunities, and the positioning of UNDP in this space. About half a million youth enter the labor market in Uzbekistan each year, with about a 5% annual increase. These trends will likely continue in the mid-term perspective. They may exacerbate existing risks in the backdrop of environmental challenges, the spread of technologies, and other socio-political factors. Or on the contrary, they can also be leveraged to transform labor markets, social resilience, and growth strategies for a better future.
Our portfolio design process adopted and re-designed the Agora methodology, a system transformation tool co-developed with UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub (IRH) and the Chora Foundation, to fit the context of our work. Initially designed for an urban pandemic response and renewal context, Agora was adapted for our needs, building on the methodology’s focus to facilitate strategic understanding and planning, coupled with non-linear thinking.
To run the process, we set up a core team which consisted of the Accelerator Lab and representatives from various programme units and projects. The Problem phase started with an online introductory session on portfolio thinking, followed by coordination meetings, desk research (e.g., stakeholder mapping, literature review, collecting observations), in-depth interviews, consultations with colleagues from other countries, and a series of workshops to consolidate our findings.
During the Problem phase, we explored what, how and why the problem manifests in the system and how we can intervene in the continually changing Future of Work space.
The team focused on exploring these questions through desk research and interviews, sharing and rendering the findings during the workshops. We conducted desk research on the following eight distinctive topics to understand the system structures and dynamics in Uzbekistan:
Seven interviews were conducted focusing on identifying the needs, resources, conditions, and intent in the Future of Work ecosystem with key UNDP Uzbekistan staff, university professors, NGO representatives, and entrepreneurs.
To consolidate the findings, identify dynamics, and map linkages at this stage, we organized several check-in and rendering workshops with the participation of the core team and an extended group of country office colleagues.
To apply systems thinking to the portfolio design process for the Future of Work in Uzbekistan, we started by asking the question of who has agency, can act, influence, and represent itself, and has access to networks, resources, and capabilities to make decisions.
As for UNDP Uzbekistan, we discussed our role in relation to the Future of Work Ecosystem in Uzbekistan and came up with the following description of the ‘identity‘ to identify and describe our position in designing the Future of Work Portfolio in Uzbekistan.
Having formulated the ‘identity‘, we moved onto thinking about the structures, elements, relations, and experiences that form the Future of Work Ecosystem in Uzbekistan. Specifically, we explored the needs, resources, and conditions around the work ecosystem to understand and identify the systemic issues and occurrences with a holistic view.
We analyzed the country’s needs as a reference point in the context of work and its future that demands the country’s attention and urges its many elements (people, institutions, businesses) to take action.
Resources available to Uzbekistan and within its immediate reach that it can bring and combine to answer to and engage with the identified needs.
Defined as structures outside the agency’s immediate control and area of influence. Often conditions refer to someone else’s Resources – they impact and mediate a country’s capability to address its needs and utilize its resources.
Analyzing the needs, resources, and conditions allowed us to generate insights about the Future of Work ecosystem and formulate our intent through rendering workshops.
Based on these insights, we were able to formulate our ‘intent’. An ‘intent‘ is a stated determination to design the Portfolio of Discovery and Strategic Option to coherently move towards the outcome sought by an agent. The agent’s identity was defined at the beginning of the process, and the desired outcome is sketched by looking at the needs, resources, and conditions of the system.
Embracing systems thinking tools and the portfolio approach requires transforming our institutional culture and individual mindsets. To paraphrase a famous quote: it would be wiser to change ourselves first before changing the world. We believe that interlinked portfolios with interventions that learn from each other will become a ubiquitous tool to address the complexity of the challenges we face. In this view, it is essential to document the learning from running this exercise, which can add to the growing body of knowledge and practice within UNDP offices across the globe. This blog series aims to serve this purpose, both sharing our experience step-by-step and providing context and insights for each step.
To complement the picture, we also want to share some of our learnings from initiating the process and running the Problem phase:
Crystallizing the Intent laid the foundation to proceed to the next – Solution Stage. In the solution phase, we built our hypothesis based on our understanding of the ecosystem and identified the areas of interest relevant to the intent. Then we moved on to looking at specific areas to design strategic options by looking into existing UNDP initiatives and projects and other national and international initiatives to create coherent and connected sets of intervention options for a portfolio. Our next blog will cover this phase in detail.
Muzaffar Tilavov is Head of Exploration at UNDP Uzbekistan Accelerator Lab. You can reach him by email: muzaffar.tilavov@undp.org or via Twitter: @mtilavov
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